New Delhi, September 20: Accusing RSS-BJP of sharpening communal divide for electoral gains, CPI(M) on Friday said the death and displacement of a large number of people in the Muzaffarnagar riots was the “perfect backdrop” for BJP to project Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate.
The “ghastly” communal violence in Muzaffarnagar has served as “the perfect backdrop for BJP to announce the anointment of the Gujarat Chief Minister as its prime ministerial prospect in the coming 2014 general elections,” CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.
He said, “Even the remotest of doubts regarding the RSS-BJP’s intensions of using the sharpening of communal polarisation as its prime electoral card are set at rest by the proud assertions of the VHP leader Ashok Singhal,” who reportedly equated the riots in Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar.
In an editorial in party organ People’s Democracy, Mr. Yechury said such statements show that RSS-BJP “no longer require a mukhota like Atal Behari Vajpayee” to push its stand that has led major allies like JD(U) to exit from NDA.
“Thus the irreconcilable contradiction that plagues any coalition led by the BJP has, once again, come to the fore,” he said.
If the NDA coalition has to be strong enough to command a majority, then BJP would have to put its “core communal agenda on the back-burner”. But unless the communal agenda is aggressively pursued as directed by RSS, BJP would not be able to either consolidate or expand its own political base, he said.
Maintaining that history had its own ways of conveying messages through historical coincidences, Yechury said, “It was on February 27, 1933 that the Reichstag (Germany’s seat of power) was set on fire. On February 27, 2002, Coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express burst into flames at Godhra.
“The former was used by Hitler to launch a vicious anti-Communist repression, abrogate democratic rights, suspend the Weimar Constitution and proceed to consolidate Nazi fascism.
The fire was later established to have been the handiwork of the fascist forces themselves,” the CPI(M) leader said.
On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. “It is, indeed, an irony of history that on this very day, 15 years earlier, in 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn-in as the Chancellor of Germany.”
Mr. Yechury also referred to the “RSS project of establishing a rabidly intolerant fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’” which was defeated during the freedom struggle”.
Referring to Mr. Modi’s recent announcement about building a large statue of Sardar Patel, he said BJP’s attempts to usurp Patel for its own benefit would not cut much ice as it was “this very Sardar Patel who had banned RSS following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.”
A government communique dated February 4, 1948, drafted by Patel announcing the ban on the RSS, had said, “The objectionable and harmful activities of the Sangh have, however, continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself”, Mr. Yechury quoted it as saying.
